The Changing Religious Face of the Court

In the rush of events surrounding the Roberts nomination, one fact that has been noted but not much remarked upon -- and perhaps that silence is itself significant -- is that Roberts, a Catholic, will bring the total number of Catholics on the Court to four (including Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas).  That's more than any other religion followed by any member of the Court.  (Prior to the current Court lineup, there were only seven Catholic Justices over the Court's history.)  We've come a long way from 1960, when John F. Kennedy's Catholicism was, for a time, a serious campaign issue.  That this sea-change in the makeup of the Court (or the fact that there is no longer one "Jewish seat") is largely treated as unremarkable represents a quiet but important change in the makeup of our elite institutions and the elite individuals who occupy them.  I don't know whether the folks at Mirror of Justice have commented on this yet, but I hope they do.

That there is no longer, I hope, a "Catholic question" or a "Jewish question" in circumstances like this does not mean one cannot, in good faith, ask interesting questions about the intersection between nominees' faiths and the nomination process.  More on this in a subsequent and lengthy post.